We have, for the first time, taken Noxoma on the hard. We have been doing quite a bit of research on where and when we should take the boat out of the water. It is recommended that it is done once per year, to inspect the boat as well as to refresh the coating under the waterline.
We have decided that we are going to put copper coat on the boat, to avoid the need for taking her out of the water annually. A lot of yards cannot handle lifting our boat (too wide/heavy/long), and as we are going to the Pacific early next year, there are few yards there that can do the job.
We chose Varadero Marina & Boat Yard in Aruba as they can both handle lifting the boat, their good references with applying copper coat, as well as the fact that it is outside the hurricane belt.
We of course were a little nervous for the whole process, but it went really smooth!
And then the work started… In +30 degrees Celsius… We had workers helping us with the hardest work, though. We are so impressed with how they were able to work in the heat with sanding the hull to prepare for the new coating. It took a total of two weeks just getting rid of the old coating.
While at the same time, we worked ourselves on other things, like cleaning the propellers, polishing chrome, etc.
After a couple of weeks on the hard, we understood that we weren’t able to do much more work, as the process of applying the copper coat now was starting. We therefore decided to take a break and use the opportunity to go back to Norway and see family and friends.